Journalist Chris Forrester has posted at Advanced Television that the UK armed forces and their families stationed overseas, including Royal Navy ships at sea, will be able to access entertainment from home using SES satellites, thanks to a new multi-year agreement.

Journalist Chris Forrester.

The armed forces use British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) as their source of entertainment and the new deal with SES will enable BFBS to continue to deliver more popular British entertainment and sporting content across the globe, from Canada in the northwest and Falkland Islands in the south, across Europe and Africa and all the way to Brunei in the Far East. “The service is an important part of making British forces and their families feel a little closer to home during deployments,” said a joint statement from BFBS and SES.

Artistic rendition of the NSS-12 satellite. Image is courtesy of SSL.

BFBS’s mix of popular news, sport and entertainment programming will be delivered via SES’s NSS-12 and SES-6 satellites. BFBS operates as part of SSVC (Services Sound and Vision Corporation), a not-for-profit charity, under a ten year contract with the UK Ministry of Defence to supply welfare by radio and TV worldwide.

“Bringing the best of British TV and Radio to our armed services around the world has an incredibly positive impact on their morale and welfare, especially when they are separated from loved ones and home life for months on end,” said Ryan Lambert, Chief Technical Officer, BFBS. “It’s great that we can now deliver more content and more channels than ever before to our forces posted around the globe via SES.”

“Our partnership with SSVC spans many years,” said Ferdinand Kayser, CEO of SES Video. “This newest agreement extends our ability to improve the lives of British Forces by bringing them more of the creature comforts of home – wherever they are stationed, including ships in the South China Sea and Eastern Pacific. We feel privileged that we can help to improve the health and well-being of service personnel and their families through the unmatched reach and reliability of our global fleet, together with the unbeatable radio and television content available from BFBS.”